A blog to keep TJ travelers and friends up-to-date on our countries and partners, and what we've been up to.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Wednesday November 6th San Lucas, Guatemala

You may have wondered why I started
sharing our daily menu. Barb Fay said she was interested and
suggested my sharing them. With today journal I am going to attach a
picture of this mornings breakfast plate. It you will see two
Guatemala enchiladas; composed of a small tortilla covered with a
mixture of cabbage and beets, some meat and then topped with two
slices of boiled eggs. Quite colorful and delicious. We had lunch
on the lake trip at one of our stops which I will tell you about
later.

We started with the day with our
morning devotion Luke 14, the Parable of the Great Dinner. We had a
lively discussion but agreed that all are welcome but many of the so
called friends and more proper invited guest had other obligations
and sent their regrets. Think it over a bit if you have the time.

We left for our boat trip around 9:00
am it was sunny and a bit breezy so I wore an over shirt at least for
the first of the voyage. We had packed our rain gear just in case.
Fortunately it was not needed. The first stop was a more of a
tourist destination. It is very apparent that San Lucas is more
impoverished that many of the other communities around the lake. I
asked Candace about it and she said that it San Lucas was more off
the main roads and harder to get to. That seemed strange in that the
other communities, at least from the lake view, appear to be more
dependent on water transpiration but I guess that not the case. Lou
and I discussed this in relation to Colorado where the counties which
have lots of tourist are quite wealthy while those without are more
destitute.

Our second stop was most enlightening.
Candace took us to two cooperatives, one for coffee and one for
textile weaving. I had been to a coffee plantation in Costa Rica but
this was far more interesting. A group of coffee farmers join and
sell their coffee to the cooperative where it is processed and then
sold to importers. The farmer is guaranteed a fair and consistent
price for his harvest, even more so than what you find in the fair
trade coffee program. The processing is quite complex and when done
right it makes a world of difference in the quality of the coffee.
This coffee is organically grown and puts the cooperative at some
disadvantage when it comes to quantity over quality. We tried their
coffee. I had a cappuccino which was very favorable. They also
served us lunch, fried chicken, rice and of course tortillas.

Our second Cooperative was even move
interesting. It is run by a group of women who raise their own
cotton, spin it into thread by hand, dye it with local substances
which gives it a more natural look as opposed to the more colorful
weaving of the other communities. The lady who spoke was quite
attractive and spoke very good English. While spinning the cotton
into thread Betty asked her how long it took her to learn the
process. She said about three years and she started when she was
eight. She is now twenty one but claims that the older women who
have been doing it much longer produce a higher quality of thread. I
have some pictures of her spinning and I will try to attach a copy.

Our third stop was the community where
the more resent civil war started. In 1980 a group of farmers were
shot by the military while they were working in the fields. Others
sought sanctuary in the church under the protection of the priest who
incidentally was from Oklahoma City. The military did not respect
the sanctuary and he too was assassinated. There is a memorial at
the church commemorating his martyrdom We took a took took to the top of
the hill to visit the church then walked back down the hill through
the market to the boat.

We arrived back at the hotel without
encountering a drop of rain. At 5:00 we had a cooking class with Marbila. I have just returned from the class. She was preparing
plantains which had been cut up and mashed with some cinnamon and
vanilla. She added some sugar-water and mixed it together. In
addition to the plantains, Marbila had cut up some black beans in
the blender and cooked them into a pasty mixture. We formed the
plantains into balls then made an indention in the center and added
the bean mixture. The plantain pastry was closed around the beans
then light rolled in flour. They each ball will then be fried and
served to us tonight. I made two of them before returning to finish
this journal.

Tomorrow we will work again at the San
Gregorio site and finish setting the reinforcing columns and start on
the rock foundation. It should go pretty quickly because we have
been making good time.